Workout log

Friday, November 20

..Am bored sitting idle on my bed, the neighbor's dog is barking its ass out and a not so cool movie is being shown on doordarshan..OK, before you google it out, let me tell you doordarshan is India's national channel. And before you ask why haven't we as yet taken TATA Sky / BIG TV or any other digital satellite TV, then am still to figure it out myself.. [read : i don't have MONEY $$]. I think i inherit some [read: most] of the traits of a gujju, and otherwise a gujrati i am, though i spent major part of my life in the state of booze & beaches of goa. Sometimes i feel proud of being one Gujju!!!. Well even dhirubhai was a gujju!!

This post is especially dedicated to a dear friend hasan who is the reason why i can post online.. It was he who got me this gprs plan activated. So thanks dude. How did i get this done from him is a long long story.. (can't post it here)

ok am just tired of typing all this crap on my mobile. So shutting it down here.Surprised that i have used a cellphone keypad to type such a longgibberish post?? Well, don't be..!! (I may be a little slow on the keyboard but on my cell phone am the best...)

PS : I am looking for some great apps for my cell phone. So any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

Friday, November 13

Orkut Just changed its L00ks. I learned about it on twitter. To get a glimpse of what it changed to , you have to get invited , and so i requested a friend on twitter to invite me. Well the new orkut does'nt look so good. That's my perspective.

ORKUT : It is a very famous social networking site in India. I know most of my friends spend most of their time on this network. Mostly preferred in orkut was scraps. There was a lot of exchange of scraps in orkut with "Hi" and then a reply to it and then would continue what would i call a scrap chat. In the meantime orkut also incorporated the status update. However there is no comment system form the status update in orkut.

FACEBOOK :Facebook is said to be the number one social networking site. You would usually find people updating their status and then replying to other's status. Or working out some quiz like "who is your soul mate?" Or "When you will die?" or something like that. You don't have to be super intelligent to know that this are just simple, funny, never-true , time pass / time waster , vague , stupid quiz. But on contrary you will not be surprised to know the huge number of people taking them.

Why do people take such quiz?Actually it may depend on every individual. But talking to some friends this is what i found out.1) The obvious one is , to take a break and chill out doing some stupid quiz.2) It is fun to read the results of the quiz. For eg , your soul mate is in Chicago, Or you will die when in sleep.3) The comment system after every quiz is what is more fun. You take a quiz, get some stupid result and then a conversation over the same topic with your friends through the comment system is more fun. There is lot of Lo Ling, small funny comments and replies.

Facebook is famous for its small applications or games. You will find most of the time people poking their friends or throwing pastries and sharing virtual beers. There is really no great significance over this but facebook users enjoy poking.

TWITTER : Twitter is a micro blogging site. You get a maximum of 140 chars to say what you are doing right now? This is also the most widely used network. Twitter is mostly a good source of sharing information.

WHY SOCIAL NETWORK IS GOOD?1)Apart from the fact that it is a way to interact with friends and family members, it is also a medium where you can make new friends. The latter part may not be true and most of the time users reject friendship request from unknown person.

2)You can keep in touch with your friends, share photographs, share music taste. Most important and most enjoyed by many users is the status update. You learn about your friends status, read about the comments and replies.

WHY SOCIAL NETWORK IS BAD?1) Sometimes it can be a time waster and eat up hell lot of your time. If you are a perfect human being (read : God) and know how to manage time (You have a time table and you strictly follow it), then may be this point is not valid for you.

2) Your status update and various other updates may sometimes put you in trouble. The comments can only be read , however there is no emotions visible. A simple joke over someone may sometimes prove a heart breaking liner for that person. So you have to be extra cautious when you share your thoughts.

3) You wish to skip a meet up with someone and so the best excuse would be a flu / fever or a headache. Successful in making the excuse? well then make sure you do not boast about your date or a booze party or a chill nigh tout on your status. This may harm your relation with the person you just skipped a meet over booze.

4) Your status update and your activities are visible to all in your friend list. Now make sure you do not have your mom or dad or a family member in your friend list when your update about a "blasting booze party".

WHICH SOCIAL NETWORK TO USE?Ask me and i would rate twitter on top. A simple 140 char rule and you are done. You can also share your photographs on twitter. Over twitter you would get a lot of your queries solved. Ask a question and someone who has a answer will definately reply. Or perhaps a RT (Re-Tweet) would help spread your message. If you have a gprs enabled device and a twitter app for your phone then you can tweet on the go. Traveling in Bus or in the local Train of mumbai tweet about it and enjoy. Twitter is a Simple and efficient way of sharing information, and i think the most preferred.

P.S : Orkut sucks...!! And am off to Delete my account. More about it in the next post. ;p

Wednesday, September 23

Kamat is a well known restaurant in INDIA. You would find a Kamat in almost every city of this country. Well know for its south indian food, kamat has indeed got its name high on the list where food industry is concerned. Some days back i got my hands over this wonderful book, "idlis orchid and will power" written by vithal venkatesh kamat.

Vithal venkatesh kamat is indeed the man behind the success of almost 400 Hotels in India and many more outside india. Here in this book he shares his experiances , his very thought provoking success secrets and many more. If you are looking for Inspiration , get a copy of this book.The family had a small restuarant in mumbai and the father was a workoholic. Looking at his father work day and night , vithal too inherited the qualities but had something more in him. In this book Mr vithal kamat shares his every small incident from his childhood to building the best eco friendly hotel "orchid".

The best part of the book i enjoyed was the interview Mr vithal kamat answered. He had no need to look for a job as he had a hotel he could work for. But vithal had a desire to know what is market value was. So he went to answer an interview.

Interviewer : "hello, Should i ask you 4 easy questions or 1 difficult question" ?Vithal : "Ask me the most difficult question"Interviewer : "OK , what came first , the HEN or the EGG??"Without any hasitation or delayVithal : "The EGG"Interviewer : "what makes you so sure that the egg came first? "Vithal : "This is your second question"

The interviewer had a smile on his face and vithal was selected for the job. However Vithal refused the job and appologised for the time of the interviewer and asked what salary he would earn for the job. 50,000 INR per year was the answer and then vithal realised what his net worth in the market was.This book also speaks about how he was cheated by his brother and was left with no property, other then his half build hotel orchid and a 100 CR debt. But the will power of Vithal venkatesh kamat made him survive this situation and become the owner of a well know hotle "THE ORCHID". The orchid has won more then 30 awards for being the best eco friedly hotel in the entire world.

P.S : Nowadays i am more addicted to books and try to read more. I might as well have a separate section for the books i have already read and what i am presently reading.Regards,idrish laxmidhar

Saturday, September 5

It was awesomely cool and well written. Loved every page of it. Yes , for all those who know about sidney sheldon will know from the title itself what i am posting here about. For the unfortunate people, "Tell me your Dreams" is one of the classic piece by the most famous novel writer SIDNEY SHELDON. Go read it, I bet you will not regret...

I love reading and when i got my hands over this book i could not wait to start with it. Before i could actually sit with it, i took a little time out to read the synopsis of the book at the back page and found it very interesting. This was 4 days back.Spending 2 hours at night every day , i managed to finish the novel and i must confess , it is the best read i ever had. Well the other Sidney sheldon novels are equally interesting and make sure you are glued to your chair, but this one had something extra.

"TELL ME YOUR DREAMS" is about a 29 yr old simple women named Ashely petterson who is suffering from MPD. Ok , before you start googling for MPD , it is a short form for "Multiple Personality Disorder".What is MPD?As the name suggest it is a disorder where in there exist multiple personalities within the same body. For instance , a person who is shy and reserved in his normal life may inhabit a strong dominant person within him at other time, and a calm cool person another time, without the host's knowledge.Similar is the issue with Ashely petterson. She hosts , Alette peters and Toni , two other women within her which come up with complete different personalities. Ashely is a simple , reserved and a loner. Alette is full of negative thoughts , born in Rome , and is a artist ,whereas Toni is more of outgoing , singer party animal.Ashely isn't aware about other two alter she inhibits. She however always has a fear that she is being stalked. As her life moves on, with a great job in a computer company as a designer , suddenly out of no where she is caught up in a problem and charged for murder , she says she never commited.

Yes before you jump to any conclusions , it was her alter toni who comited the murders. She killed people and castrated them.Her father who happens to be a famous surgeon , has a full faith on her daughter and thinks that she is innocent. He approaches criminal lawyer whom he had helped years back save his mother.David singer , was a criminal lawyer at first , but is now a company lawyer for a famous firm and about to get a partnership in the same. But now he is forced to take up ashely's case.

The author has very well narrated the life of david and how he tries his hard to make sure that his client ashely is acquitted. Then follows court sessions and at the end the jury is convinced that ashely is convicted for deleberately murdering and castrating people.IS ASHELY ACQUITTED OR CONVICTED BY THE JUDGE?Ok i will not be a spoil sport here and give out the main plot. But before you close the browser and hurry to a book store to buy your copy , here is some questions you need to find the answer for..Is she acquitted by the judge even after she is charged with cold blooded murders?If not, then how does David singer help her prove innocent?How does ashely suffer from MPD?what is the reason she is a host to "toni - a aggresive and short tempered" , and "allette - a italian shy and negative thinker"?There are some people ashely did not even know. Since she had no motive , why would she kill them. ?Is MPD curable ? If yes how does she get herself treated for it.

My Verdict.Out of 5 i would rate it 4.The author has nicely put all the three characters and beautifully narrated their lives.

Tuesday, August 25

Yes , the holy month of ramazan begins. It is a very auspicious month , where people pray , fast and ultimately at the end of the month enjoy EID. Fasting provides spiritual peace and also there is more of scientific significance of it. As per my knowledge , every religion has some or the other day where they carry out the fast.

For the month of Ramazan we usually have these timings. Have breakfast before 4.30AM and and then at around 6.00AM during the sunrise the first prayers or namaaz as we call it. The afternoon prayers are at about 1.05 PM and the evening prayers start at 6.50PM. After the evening prayers is the time to release the fast with little pinch of salt and water. All this followed by dinner at night. Also since this being the holy month , many make sure that they read the quran and finish it as many times as possible.

This post isn't actually all about Ramazan and its teachings. This post is more about the educational / scientific aspect of the Fasting during the month of the Ramazan. Oh and actually whatever follows now in this post , is actually a direct copy + paste of a beautiful email which speaks about Fasting. The email explains about fasting so beuatifully , that i took the previliegde to copy it here.

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Educational Aspects of FastingThere are many aspects in fasting as it has many material and spiritual effects on mankind, but perhaps the most important effect is the “moral aspect”‌ and “educational philosophy”‌. One who fasts should prevent eating and drinking despite hunger and thirst in addition to control lustful desires. One has to prove that he is different from the animals and he is not chained by food and other worldly things; and that he can control his desires and rule his lust.Thus, one of the most important benefits of fasting is that one’s soul softens, strengths determination, balances natural desires and most importantly the spiritual and moral outcome. The example of mankind who has access to any kind of food and drinks and can demand so whenever needed, is like the tree that has been protected with walls of a garden from winds and storms and given adequate water from any drought. Obviously such tree wills not standing any change to environment and inclement weather condition as it has never had such conditions; and it wills eventual die. On the contrary, the tree that grows on the rock s of a mountain or in the middle of a desert learns to cope that environment from early days and grows with certain rough conditions. Fasting does the same thing with body and soul of mankind. With temporary limitations the body as well as the mind learns to be strong and manage the needs; and when desires are under control, then the soul will enlighten and spiritually improve. Further, fasting will ascend humans from the world of animals to the world of angels; the sentence “that you may learn self-restraints”‌ in verse 183 of al-Baqara (The Cow) points this very fact after commanding the faithful to fast.Prophet Muhammad (PBUH&HP) says in a famous narration: “Fasting is a shield against the fire of Hell.”‌ (1)And in Nahj al-Balaghah, when Amir al-Mu’minin (PBUH) explains the philosophy of worships, he describes fasting in this manner: “Allah (SWT) has commanded fasting to be in religion to develop purity in people.”‌ (2)And in another narration Amir al-Mu’minin (PBUH) asked Prophet Muhammad (PBUH&HP): “How can we make Satan distant from us?”‌ The Great Prophet (PBUH&HP) replied: “Fasting makes Satan’s face black [from panic] charity for Allah (SWT) breaks his back; loving for the sake of Allah (SWT) and consistent good deed will cut off his continuityand repenting cuts the vein of his heart.”‌ (3)Moreover, the month of Ramadan has been chosen for fasting because this month has is the most important month. Allah (SWT) explains the reason for importance of this holy month in verse 185 of al-Baqara (The Cow) as the month in which the Holy Quran was revealed; this book is the ultimate guidance (Furqaan) for mankind which means it distinguishes the correct act from incorrect in his life time and ensures salvation of mankind. There are many narrations that other holy books such as Torah, Gospel, Psalms and the Holy Quran have been revealed in this holy month.Therefore, the holy month of Ramadan has always been the time of descent for holy books and it has always been a month of education and growth. Because there cannot be any education without proper guidance. Hence, the educational aspect of fasting should be followed with deep understanding and divine guidance so that the body and soul of mankind can wash away the dirt of sin. Indeed we would be at grave loss if we allow this golden opportunity to flee out of our hands without beautifying our souls in the pure month of Ramadan. Now that we are in the beginning of the path, let us beware.

Sunday, July 26

I am a regular visitor of video sharing site You tube. But have never uploaded any videos on it. Some days back i had to upload some videos of a talk. At first i thought it would be a piece of cake. Just go to upload link on you tube and upload.

Ohh.. and this videos , i had to upload it on the blogger site. So what i had planned was to upload it on the you tube site and then embed it over the Blogger. This way it would be available on both the sites for easy public viewing.

So what happened ?

The talk was about 2 hrs. I received the DVD of the talk. In fact i received three DVD's. And the entire talk was cut into parts of 21 min each. To my surprise each part was around 976MB that is almost a GB. All this parts were in .VOB format. The next step was to convert this parts into some other format which was lesser in size and also did not affect the quality of both the video and the audio. What i had in mind was to convert it to .AVI (Audio - Video - Interleave) format.

What i Did ? With no second thoughts , i searched for a free video conversion software and with no good results called up a friend and he suggested me to go for ANY VIDEO CONVERTER. Well this is a very good converter software and does most of the video conversions. Installing and using this software was easy. Converting the .VOB file to .AVI took me around 10 min and to my complete amazement the size was reduced from 976 MB to 145 MB. This was very helpful. The video and audio quality did not get affected (at least to my notice). I also tried converting the .VOB to .FLV format there was not much change in size. The .FLV size was about 110 MB.

The next step was to upload the videos over You tube.

What i learned ?you tube had some restrictions. Upload size should not be more than 2GB and each video must not exceed 10 min. Well out of excitement i overlooked the second condition and uploaded the converted avi video. Uploading took me almost 2hrs. ( I used BSNL home unlimeted plan). Well it did upload the video but after processing the video it rejected it because it was more than 10 min. (Waste of time... [:(] ).So my next step was to forget you tube and jump directly to blogger.

There the condition was that the video size should not exceed more then 100 MB. so again a issue. After converting from .VOB(976MB) to .AVI(145MB) i again had to convert it to some other format which would still reduce the size. Over Blogger i learned that it also accepts .MOV.Now since there was no option for .avi to .mov conversion in ANY video Converter , i had google out for a soultion.

I learned about this software called oxelon media . This was a very simple small size software which did the required job for me. you can download it from here and also download the plugin from here.

And the result was amazing here too. The .AVI file (145MB) after converting to .MOV was reduced directly to around 55MB. Looking at the video , nothing much was changed. The video and the audio quality was good as required and served the porpose.

Conclusion :with the help of any video converter and oxelon media converter the 976MB video was converted to 55MB.

There can be a lot more options for this conversion. My main porpose of the entire job was served and so i was happy with the result.

Friday, July 17

Transferring Movies , songs or picnic Photos through a Pen drive over your system ?? Why not scan it first. Yes, pen drive transfers are the most common source for Virus or worms to enter your PC and make it vulnerable to problems. Some days back one of my friends asked me to come and see his laptop as it had become very slow. When i checked the Laptop, it was affected by the most common folder.exe virus. Previously i had installed AVAST free edition on his laptop but he did not update it in spite having internet connection. OK , so this time i went with avira antivirus software and cleaned his system.

Having a antivirus is must these days. There are many softwares available in the market. Nortan , bit diffender, nod 32, panda, and yes also the very famous kaspersky. ( Most of them prefer kasperky here in goa ). But what about the free antivirus which are available.

I googled for "free antivirus" and avast topped the list , followed by avira and avg.

I am a avira user and also very satidfied with the software.

So for all those who feel that free softwares are not worth the security you need , then i will say you are wrong.

If you follow simple steps to protect your PC then the problem of virus will never bother you. First and formost always make sure you always scan pen drives / flash drives before using them. Also make sure you alswys update your antivirus software. Scan your systems frequently within period of a week or 10 days or atleast once in a month.

Saturday, May 30

We all know how google plays a important role in our life. IF you been using google then you must have realized that they are now using the google suggestion which is basically built with the help of AJAX technology. Here as you enter your keywords , google suggesion suggests the most relevant results before you hit enter. So that while you are typing , if the suggestion you get is what you desired then you do not need to continue typing, just select the suggestion and you are done. Well along with the suggestion , google suggest also provides the number of results your query would get. This is amazing isn't it?

OK i am not here to talk about this. Actually i was trying to search out something and the google suggestions top result made me Laugh Out Loud.

I was typing "How to" and the top suggestion i received was "How to get pregnant". It was damm funny. I think this is why microsoft came up with thier decesion search engine.

PS : There isn't anything wrong with the google suggestion result, but it was totally ROFL moment. Attaching here the screen shot i took.

Wednesday, May 27

some days back i received an e-mail. It had this image attachment , which speaks for itself.

Giving away laptops for FREE if you forward to 8 emails..?? WOW this got to be superb. Sony Ericsson Guys are very generous i must say.Although this image tells us everything what we need to do but has no details when we would get our Free laptop , nor it has any address (not the email , of course the physical location).

For all those who forward this email to all their friends, with the hope of winning the lappy, I dnt want to break your heart ;) and so let us assume that you will soon get your price for the valuable time you spent to sent the emails.

But the question still arises...

So after i send the email, how long would i have to wait to claim my laptop.??

You might say , we got the email address of the person who suppose to be person in charge of this promotional scheme. We can always ask for a reply.

But will this help.??

This post isn't about when you will get the laptop or whether you will get it or not. I choose to write about this because i really liked something in this email which i would like to share..

1) I am quite sure , atleast from the email address i could see from the fwd , most of these people who froward the mail are educated and am sure would be possessing a good education qualification. So they got lure away for this FREE scheme. So this proves that well learned people also got a tiny miny space in their brains which get carried away when they hear / read "FREE". OK enough of all this shit from me..Let me come to the main point.

2) I like this ad because , it is so nicely put up and the author gets a nice collection of data. All the email ID's now a days are so useful. This is a beautiful way to collect data. This is what attracted my attention.

Wednesday, May 20

My friend peter suggested this awesome post, and i could not resist myself to copy and post it here..I found the post from here

This post is something which gives a meaning to what life is and how we can make it more beautiful

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 Hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar . . . and the coffee.

A professor stood before his Philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.

They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.

He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.

Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full.

The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.

The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

“The golf balls are the important things - your God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

“The sand is everything else–the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

“The same goes for life. “If you spend all your time and energy on the smallstuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

“Play with your children”

“Take time to get medical checkups”.

“Take your partner out to dinner”.

“Play another 18″.

“There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal”

“Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter”

“Set your priorities”

“The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked.

“It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a cup of coffee with a FRIEND “

Friday, May 15

All those who are familiar with web designing will know about cross browser issues. You start designing a beautiful layout with CSS and after much testing in Firefox when you are satisfied with the results, you realize all those efforts are in vain, just to find out that the design looks ugly in IE or some other browser like opera or safari. (Most of the time it is IE).

I had the same problem with IE. So how can we overcome issues in such situations?

1) Firefox Addon to make life easier

First thing first. Firefox is the most widely used browser among web designers. It provides very useful sets of Addons like the Web developer toolbar , firebug which are a must to assure easy , smooth coding.

The next thing is to make sure your css looks perfect both in firefox and IE. The IE tab addon for firefox can come to rescue here. You can download it here. You do not need to have FF and IE simultaneously open for this. A small FF icon at the bottom right of your browser , when clicked changes to IE tab. So you can easily test how your CSS would appear in IE. Another click on the icon and you are back to FF.

2) The centering Issue.

Now days since everyone mostly uses a 1024 * 786 Resolution or higher monitors , the basic width of the website mostly considered is 960px. For this we define a div tag which will include the entire web page mostly called as the body-wrap or container. (The div name can be anything depending on your choice.)

Your css will look like this :

body {

margin : 0px;padding:0px;background-color:#FFFFFF;

}

#body-wrap {

Width : 960px;height:auto;margin-left : auto; /* this will assure that your main body or the layout is centered to the */margin-right:auto; /*main browser window.. */

}

The above code will work well for FF , however it will not work for IE. IE would not consider it centered and continue displaying it left aligned.

Width : 960px;height:auto;margin-left : auto; /* this will assure that your main body or the layout is centered to the */margin-right:auto; /*main browser window.. */text-align : left /* this will counter the body center.

}

The above small change to the code will do the trick.

Well there are a lot of problems that occur in IE , this is one of the basic and if not known may create a lot of frustration. Hope this helps.

Saturday, May 9

Gmail is now the standard email service most of us use. May be for personal or business purpose it is fastest and easiest. some time back when i was online on gmail, one of my friend Peter asked me to check if i could open the gmail inbox. Now since i was in gmail and peter asked me in gmail chat, i bluntly said i could, but soon later when i tried to open inbox, and i got 500 - temporary error. I then tried to refresh the page several times and i was told to try again later. I experienced this for the first time. Well this is not the issue.

What if gmail is down for entire day.?? It will affect the business of many people. May be lots of money loss. For example if Mr X applies for some contract in a Company, and the Co. replies with a Yes and also asks for an immediate reply , if gmail were down , Mr X would not be able to reply and loose the contract.

Monday, April 27

yesterday after the cricket match when i was all tired waiting for my mom to get me some Rasana, i received a call from some guy. (The code of the number looked that the call was from Bombay). I got this call on my Airtel number which i dnt use and none of my friends know about it. Though i was damm tired, the loud ringing of my nokia 3315 phone forced me to attend the call.

After i diconnected, i laughed and told the story to my mom and sis..We all had a laugh.

Meanwhile the same guy called 3 more times. Eventually i ended up talking to him nicely and properly explaning how each telephone/cellphone number is unique and even if i disconnected my phone for him, he would not be able to talk to his family. I hope he understood the concept.

At one point, i could not control my laughter, and at same time, i felt pitty on the guy for not been able to call up his family..

Thursday, April 23

Hi. After my encounter with posterous.com and its ability to update my blog through emails, i was fascinated and wondered whether blogger has the same capability or not. You can check my posterous postings here . And after a google search, i found out that it was possible in blogger too. this is a very very useful stuff for all those who are glued to their mail box 24hrs a day. With blogger you just need to make some changes in your settings tab under email, and bingo, you are ready to go.

Let me talk more on this. In posterous.com you just need to send an email to post@posterous.com from your email account. In this service no need to sign in or make a account. just send an email and you are done. Immediately you will get a confermation that your post has been posted. it is that dead simple. So here you don't have to authenticate yourself. your email acts as your signiture.

Now talking about blogger. When i changed my settings so to enable blogging via email, i found out that you need to send an email to some address which you have created secretly. For eg in the settings you get to choose your posting address as in

Now this seems OK, only till the address remains secret. What if someone gets hold of this address? He/ she can also post into my blog by just sending an email to this address. Is there any security measures to overcome this. I guess keeping the address secret is the only way you can be assured that it is not being misused.

Friday, April 10

About 5 hrs remaining, yes I am at present performing a Disk defragmentation of my PC. And
this is the reason why I am writing this post.

What is Disk Defragmentetion?Hard disk store data in chunks called sectors. Initially when OS is installed freshly, the files are stored in a systematic order, in an organized manner.

When you add a file, the OS places it anywhere it finds sufficient space to place that file. The OS could have placed it contiguously, but it didn't.

Fragmentation :In a hard disk , when files, folders are created, copied, pasted to some other location,deleted from hard drive, they tend to get fragmented.so over time, they end up in pieces spread all over the hard drive.

One part of file is placed in some location , and the other part is placed on other location. The part of the file is linked to the other part. Thus the OS knows how to locate the files and access them.

When looking for this fragmented files, the read/ write head of the hard disk has to do a lot of moving around. These may cause system slowing down, during boot time, and also slow down the transfer rate.

Defragmentation :The idea behind defragmentation is that , all the similar files are to placed in a sequential order. The Program disk defragmeter in Microsoft windows, helps to get all the similar files in a sequential order placing them in sectors close to each other.

In addition, a good defragmenter may also try to optimize things even more, for example by placing all applications "close" to the operating system on the disk to minimize movement when an application loads.

When done well on older disks, defragmenting can significantly increase the speed of file loading.

On a new disk that has never filled up or had any significant number of file deletions, it will have almost no effect because everything is stored sequentially already.

As you might imagine, the process of individually picking up and moving thousands of files on a relatively slow hard disk is not a quick process -- it normally takes hours.

P.S : For the defragmenter to properly run, ensure you have no applications running. Typically, SYSTRAY and EXPLORER are all you need to have running to run this application.

Wednesday, April 1

This ain't no techie post. I was damm bored so went on to google maps and searched my college. Here is a pic of my college on Google maps. well in the process i learned that we can also sync our flickr account to our blogger account and make a post entry of our flickr photos to our blogs. Isn't this so simple and cool. ?? Enjoy

Thursday, March 26

This post is about a virus i learned about when a friend called me to repair his PC. This were the problems i found on the PC.

When using IE , the title bar reads this "Hijack by Godzilla" .

For all the Drives, you cannot Double click and open to view the contents of the drive. you need to right click and open to view the contents .

When i checked for "My comuter - > Tools - > Folder options" , Everything seemed to work properly, but when i checked "Show hidden files and folders" and restarted the PC, the changes made earlier reverted back.

The windows task manger seemed to work fine.(there were many processes ,but i did not take a proper look at them)

The first thing i did was to download avast antivirus . I scanned the PC and found autorun.inf threats in each drive which i then deleted. This solved the problem of drive view which i mentioned in the 2nd point. The folder options and hijack by Godzilla problems still remained.

This is a virus and it is mostly spread via portable drives.

A little google research told me , that there is a script and some files that run everytime when you start your PC and make a entry in the registry.

So the next step was to find wscript.exe in windows task manager and stop these processes. When i opened task manager i did not find this script running.

The next step was to check : show hidden files and folders in tools - > folder options in My computer. also uncheck the Hide extention… and Hide protected operating system file.

Look for autorun.inf and MS32DLL.dll.vbs in all the drives and shift + Delete them permanently.well in my case , avast already deleted autorun.inf . And i could not locate the MS32DLL.dll.vbs

The "hijack by Godzilla" window title entry is made in windows registry. This can be found here in registry. Go to start - > run - > regedit , click OK. Registry Edit dialogue will display. and

This should have solved the problem but, once i restarted , the problem was still there.

The next step i did was to download hijack this . HijackThis lists the contents of key areas of the Registry and hard drive--areas that are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. The program is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks. It does not target specific programs and URLs, only the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites.

Since , MS32DLL.exe was the process which was a suspicious program which i think triggerd the virus , i used hijack this to remove this process and later when i restarted it solved the problem.

Thursday, March 19

Google guys are gearing up and often releasing some great stuff. Here's some other features in gmail after most talked offline-gmail. Yes, now you can view any youtube video right inside your mailbox. If anyone sends you a link of a you tube video you can directly view it inside the mailbox inline. So also you can view flickr , picassa and yelp previews in mail.

To take advantage of this feature, you need to first go to your gmail account - > settings - > labs and enable these features. There are a lot of other great goodies. Go and give a try.

I gave it a try myself, sent a counter strike video link from you tube and checked it out into my mailbox. Everything went smooth as expected.

Advantage here is no more redirecting to you tube or flickr or picassa or yelp site. watch video / see photos inside your mailbox. i have not given a try to flickr , or picassa but i am quite sure , they are as functional as the you tube experiment. Good going Google.

Sunday, March 8

Google maps have been over the internet from long time now. But it is at this time that i came across it. A little bit of Exploration made me love this product by the GOOGLE. It is very fascinating and enjoyable. A 2D/3D view of the entire world with so much precise information is indeed appreciable. I then decided to try my hands over this and learn the google API.you can visit here to check the google maps.

Also Google has made available the API so that anyone can use them in their web sites.

GOOGLE MAPS

Google maps is a free web mapping service application provided by google.Google Maps provides high-resolution satellite images for most urban areas in India, US and many other parts of the world.

Google has made these satellite images very user friendly and so also a lot of information can be collected from this maps. For instance, if you just enter a country name, or a state or perhaps a city name, into the search box and hit enter, you get to see the map. The map you are taken to , has almost all the information, the street name, important destinations such as schools, temples, road names , railway tracks etc etc. Along with the map view, we also have a satellite view and a hybrid view. The satellite view helps to get the satellite images and i must say, they are very precise. In no time , i could locate my house. And hybrid is a combination of both map view and satellite view.

The Google map API gives a lot of freedom to developers. It allows to put markers on the map. With the help of markers you can easily and explicitly point out the area of interest for your users.

For eg, if you have a office with a lot of branches spread over in different locations. Use google maps in your web site and provide useful information of all the offices and branches , for easy follow to your customers. Another example could be for a real estate agency, which can provide a lot of information about the plots and flats for sale via google maps so that their customers have a easy choice.

Well, there can be a lot of ways google maps can be helpful. have your idea, use the google map api and execute them.

After studying some api examples i finally managed to make this simple web page showing the google map with my location, my school and my college.